Heidi M. Ravven (born 1952) is the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and
Religious Studies at
Hamilton College
Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. It was founded as Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793 and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 in honor of inaugural trustee Alexander Hamilton, following ...
, where she has taught her specialization, Jewish Philosophy, and general
Jewish Studies since 1983. She is a Fellow in Neurophilosophy of the Integrative Neurosciences Research Program, which is co-directed by Vilayanur Ramachandran and Kjell Fuxe. She has been appointed Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the School of Marxism at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China, for 2017-20.
Professor Ravven holds a Ph.D. from
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, ...
(1984), attended
Smith College, and is a 1970 graduate of the
Commonwealth School, Boston. Ravven was a founding member of the Society for Empirical Ethics, an organization devoted to promoting dialogue among
philosophers,
neurobiologists,
psychologists,
anthropologists, and other social and natural scientists about
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
.
Career
Ravven is a neurophilosopher and specialist on the philosophy of the seventeenth century philosopher,
Baruch Spinoza. She was the first to argue that Spinoza's moral philosophy is a systems theory of ethics. Ravven was also the first philosopher to propose that Spinoza anticipated central discoveries in the neuroscience of the emotions. Ravven has published widely on Spinoza's philosophic thought, on the twelfth century philosopher
Moses Maimonides
Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah s ...
, on
G.W.F. Hegel and
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
, and on
Jewish ethics and
Jewish feminism
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branc ...
.
She has been active in the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, the
International Neuroethics Society The International Neuroethics Society (INS) is a professional organization that studies the social, legal, ethical, and policy implications of advances in neuroscience. Its mission is to encourage and inspire research and dialogue on the responsible ...
, the North American Spinoza Society, and is a member of the
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarl ...
, the Association for Jewish Studies, the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, and the Society for Jewish Ethics. Ravven is a past member of the Advisory Editorial Board of the ''Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics''.
Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
/ref> She is responsible for advising and editorial activities in two areas: in Neurophilosophy and also in Ethics.
In 2004 Ravven received an unsolicited $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
to write a book rethinking ethics. That book, ''The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will'' was published by The New Press
The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin[free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...]
. Attributing free will to human beings means that human beings have the capacity to rise above both nature and nurture and even current situation to be good people and choose to act ethically. This capacity to choose our actions—to rise above our genetic inheritance whatever it might be, above our upbringing no matter how terrible it was, and above our present situation despite its social pressures—is what is meant by "free will." We do moral acts for moral reasons, for no other fully determining reasons, and out of no other fully determining causes—such as brain modules, group pressures, or upbringing. And that is why we can be held morally responsible. Ravven argues that this view is false and also that it is a cultural belief particular to the Western world. She traces the belief in free will to a theological myth and notion of human nature, and exposes the origins of the idea of free will in the Christian theology of the Latin West originating in the Church Father St. Augustine. She describes how that theology became secularized so that many today are unaware than free will presupposes a human person beyond nature and environment who can intervene as if from above (like an all-powerful God). "The Self Beyond Itself" was translated into Chinese under the direction of Professor Han Quihong of Northeast Normal University in Changchun, China, and published by the People's Publishing House in 2016.
Ravven turns to search the new brain sciences to discover new ways that moral agency could be rethought without free will. She concludes that there are three factors that together determine action: nature (biology, etc.), nurture (biography, history, culture, language, etc.), and present situation (social belonging and its demands, incentives, and disincentives, and the like). So the most effective way of changing individual behavior is to intervene in social and cultural and familial systems at every scale. Promoting and bolstering diversity and whistle blowing within all these systems is vital to combating the tendencies to Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...
that human nature makes us all too prone to. For we are social and contextual beings—our brains have evolved that way. Nevertheless, as Spinoza anticipated, an arduous path of the education of desire can lead to independence of mind from the tyranny of the immediate local world for those who undertake it. We can learn to be good even if we cannot freely choose to be good.
Heidi Ravven has written extensively on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Her articles appear in a number of journals and several have been republished in anthologies. Ravven believes that Spinoza's philosophy is the best starting point for trying to integrate the evidence emerging from the new brain sciences into a viable model of the basic moral brain, the optimal route to its development, and the implications of such a view for how social, legal, political, and other institutions and practices might to be redesigned. Ravven is now engaged in writing a book accessible to a generally educated audience on the relevance of Spinoza, called ''The Return of Spinoza.''
Bibliography
Books
*''Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy'' (State University of New York Press 2002)
*''The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will'' (The New Press, forthcoming 2013)
Selected articles
*Introduction to ''Benedict de Spinoza: 'Theological-Political Treatise.' ''New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2009.
* "What Spinoza Can Teach Us About Embodying and Naturalizing Ethics." in ''Spinoza''. Ed. Genevieve Lloyd, Moira Gatens, 2006.
*"What Can Spinoza Teach Us Today About Naturalizing Ethics? Provincializing Philosophical Ethics and Freedom without Free Will," in ''Cognitive, Emotive, and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence'' 3. (2005)
*Introduction to ''Benedict de Spinoza: 'Ethics' and 'On the Improvement of the Understanding. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005.
*"Spinoza's Systems Theory of Ethics." in ''Cognitive, Emotive, and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence'' 3. (2004)
*"Was Spinoza Right About Ethics? A Look at Recent Discoveries in the Neurobiology of the Emotions," in ''Studia Spinoza'' 14. (2004)
*"Spinoza's Ethic of the Liberation of Desire." in ''Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy''. Ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, 2004.
*"Spinoza's anticipation of contemporary affective neuroscience," in ''Consciousness & Emotion'' 4. (2003)
* "Spinoza's individualism reconsidered: some lessons from the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being" in Volume I CONTEXT, SOURCES, AND EARLY WRITINGS of Routledge Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers: Spinoza, edited byGenevieve Lloyd, 2001
* "Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination," The Journal of the History of Philosophy (two-part articleserialized in the April and July, 2001 issues: Volume XXIX, Numbers 3 & 4)
* "The Garden of Eden: Spinoza's Maimonidean Account of the Genealogy of Morals and the Origin of Society" in Philosophy and Theology, Volume 13, Number 1 (2001)
* "Has Hegel Anything to Say to Feminists?" in The International Libraryof Critical Essays in the History of Philosophy Series: Volume II HEGEL, David Lamb, ed. (Tom D. Campbell, General Editor of the Series), Aldershot, UK:Ashgate: International Publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities,(1998).
See also
* American philosophy
* List of American philosophers
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
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Further reading
*''Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza'', GillesDeleuze (1992)
* ''Spinoza and Politics'', Etienne Balibar
* ''Bodies, Masses, and Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries, ''Warren Montag
* ''The New Spinoza, ''Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, editors
* ''Spinoza and Other Heretics, ''Yirmiyahu Yovel (two volumes)
* T''he Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions ''(Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology), Jaak Panksepp, 2012
References
External links
Hamilton College Religious Studies Department
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ravven, Heidi
1952 births
Living people
American feminists
20th-century American Jews
Jewish feminists
Jewish philosophers
American women philosophers
Brandeis University alumni
Smith College alumni
Religious philosophers
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
Religious studies scholars
Spinoza scholars
Commonwealth School alumni
21st-century American women
21st-century American Jews